My latest bedtime reading has been The Food of Britain from the Time-Life series from the 70"s, great books if you can find them. Those kind of pies are called raised pies because they use a hot water crust that can be molded into a decorative edge. I don't know about the eggs, but if I can retrieve this book from under the bed, and if you pm me with your email address, I could scan it into a pdf file and send it to you. (Unless that runs into all kinds of copyright things...

As I was scooping seemingly endless numbers of cupcakes today, it occurred to me that the two forms of gelatin are the same, weight for weight. But you still need to know how many teaspoons are in an oz in order to know how much to sub for a sheet. I work for America's largest natural and organic foods retailer and we are restricted to using one particular brand of gelatin, and it seems to be very hard to come by, for me at least. I know of two other stores that have a...

There are ten sheets of gelatin to an ounce. To be safe, I think you should buy a little bit more than an ounce of powdered gelatin and weigh out an ounce, like at the post office where they have good scales. Then use a teaspoon to portion out that ounce, and count how many teaspoons you get. Then you will know how many teaspoons equals how many leaves, and you should be able to make your dessert.

I'm sorry to say I didn't write that. New York Magazine used to run little snippets of things, I don't remember if it was along the lines of "It was a dark and stormy night" kind of thing, but I read the thing about waking up in Manila, and it scared me so much, what with all the blackout drinking and all, that I clipped it out and slipped it behind a picture in a frame, and when I got particularly nervous about where it was all going to end, I would take it out, read it,...

Vanilla Chiffon Genoise
1 lb egg yolks
1.5 lb granulated sugar
6 oz vegetable oil
1 lb egg whites
18 oz sifted cake flour
1/2 oz baking powder
2.5 oz water
vanilla extract to taste
Beat the yolks and half the sugar to full volume.
Turn to medium speed and add the oil.
Whip the whites to a medium peak and and slowly add the sugar to make a meringue.
Sift the flour and baking powder.
Mix the water and the vanilla.
Add the flour and water to the yolks in...

As long as we're talking scifi--there's Ringworld by Larry Niven, I enjoyed Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson, then there was some wacky series by Dan Simmons that started with The Rise of Endymion. that's enough to keep a fast reader going to St. Patrick's Day. And there's nothing wrong with going a little retro and reading The Mists of Avalon.

This is a riot. I found her web site, with an address, wrote her last night, and she replied this morning. So I'll keep the book. The rye bread is well into it's first rise, and I'm thinking herring and sour cream, a little smoked salmon, liverwurst and spicy mustard......She was quite nice about it.